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Hi folks,
I see it's not that easy stopping the compulsive writing of fanfic... So here goes, I think this will be the last instalment of the 'Whim' sequence.
Comtess, Lady Orient, you left such lovely reviews again that I feel quite humbled. You're right - given the rather complex, grey-in-grey characters of the lads, where nothing is what it appears to be, everything gets complicated by Aya's penchant for high drama, and Yohji's close-your-eyes-and-live attitude is not always helpful - can they ever be happy? Oddly enough, Schuldig - always contrary -seems to believe it possible, and Crawford too - that's why he's so much on edge here... And yes, Yohji can be a bit on the sly side,while Crawford has more to offer than bullishness, and Schuldig is not exactly the hapless victim though he can be rather endearing in this role... yet beware, he still bites. So in the end, they're all worth one another. And they know it.
Hope you have fun with this one too.
Cheers
LH
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Warnings: male/male affection and references to sex.
Rating: M for the above reasons.
Spoilers: for Aya's background.
Summary: Shining a flashlight in the murky solution to a muddled problem. Starring Aya and Yohji, Schuldig and Crawford. Perhaps sometimes, it's better not to look too closely...
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"Why're you doing this?" Aya hisses at Yohji who lies, on his back, fully dressed and squirming, on Aya's futon. "You don't know, do you… always pushing and shoving -why can't you give me a break?"
The shifting of bodies in the dark… the soft swish of fabric as feverish hands tear it off hot limbs, the sweaty slick slide of skin on skin…
"Because I want you to SAY it," Yohji bites out as Aya rips his clothes off him.
"I won't. Not like this. Not with you prodding and blackmailing me… you stink of him, everywhere." Aya yanks Yohji up to drag his shirt off him.
Yohji pushes at him, not too harshly. "I showered," he protests.
"He marked you," Aya sneers, batting Yohji's hands down. "It's like the pong of a fox, you can't get rid of it. You're filthy." A firm thud as he slams Yohji back onto the futon,and settles over him, kneeling, head thrust forward accusingly… "A filthy, dirty whore..."
Yohji turns his head aside. "You make me wanna scream."
"I WILL make you scream," Aya snarls.
Teeth, sharp and bruising, branding the side of Yohji's neck… hands strong from wielding a sword, pressing down hard, clamping his wrists to the floor above his head, nails digging into smooth muscle, clawing between the ridges of bones and tendons to immobilise and hurt.
Yohji's face twists as his breath rushes out of him in a harsh gasp. "Make me scream for the right reasons."
"There are no right reasons. Not for us. Not for you and me. I am going to kill this bastard… I swear to you on my life and that of my sister: you see him again, and I'm going to shred him."
"I… do… not… care that… much…" More gasps, a deep intake ofair as theYohji's long, sleekly muscularbody writhes on the floor. "For… ah… I…"
Breath fading, returning with a deep groan somewhere between anger, lust and pain as, terrified, Aya tears at Yohji's hair and bites down forcefully on Yohji's lower lip to seal in the heresy about to slip forth.
Yohji yelps, his eyes water. "What… do you… what do you want me to do?" he manages, spittle and blood oozing from his mouth into Aya's.
Aya lets go, pale skin stained with Yohji's blood, small, hot hands sliding from Yohji's bruised wrists over his shoulders, to end up combing shakily through sweatcaked honeyblond hair. "Stop slutting around! Stop seeing him! I'm going to kill you too if you see him again!"
"Then… I'd have to fight… you…" breathes Yohji, somewhere between a keen and a sob.
Aya licks over his lip, tasting metal and salt, a hint of cigarette smoke and coffee. Yohji. "Why can't you just do…"
"…as you tell me? No." Unhappy, rebellious.
Aya glares down at Yohji, holding him still by fistfuls of hair. "Because I can't give you what you want? What is it about him then? What can you have with him, but not with me?"
Yohji stares back, green eyes cool, the slightest bit calculating perhaps. Holding the hint of a challenge. Not quite his mission face, but close. "He's easy," he bites out. "Doesn't try to improve me. Doesn't keep nagging me. He's more... like me." All that is true. Yet heaven forbid he tell Aya what he barely admits to himself, preferring to bury it deep enough to discount it as forgotten. That the feel of Schuldig's hair reminded him of HER. Just once, a fleeting moment. Once. Ridiculous. Enough. Too much.
There it is, the familiar flash of passionate heat behind those purple contacts. "Because he lets you wallow in filth and I don't? Is that what you like, rolling in mud like a..." Aya breaks off, chewing his lip, and then he shakes his head, defeat creeping up on him by agonising degrees. Beginning to paralyse him though he is still trying hard to resist. "I don't have what you're after! Why… why can't you just take me for who I am? I am Aya now… but you still love Ran, always Ran… he's gone, Yohji, for good. This name– you know why I kept it?"
Yohji closes his eyes. "Your… sister…"
"Aa, that was one reason, but not the main one… I kept it because you… you gave me this name."
That night when Yohji's wire snarecaught Aya like some exotic bird, hugging him close in a deadly embrace, saving him from being gutted by Ken's claws... And later Aya had lain on his bed at the Koneko, bleeding anddrifting in and out of his nightmares, with Yohji sitting and listening, driven by his innate curiosity... Aya, those pale lips had whispered, Aya...He had refused to tell them his real name, so Yohji had taunted him with the girl's name, and later it simply had stuck. It seemed fitting, he had decided, that he take his sister's name anyway, to remind him... of his loss, of his duty, and that he had no right to happiness...
Yohji makes no reply, his chest heaving ,his pulse throbbing hard in the vein at his neck. Aya is waiting, for a few breathless heartbeats, but then hesuddenly slumps back, his taut form crumbling into a limp slouch. "Yohji," he whispers, "Yohji… I begged you… You made ME beg… What else should I do?"
The silence lasts a small eternity.
Before Yohji's eyes slide open, shimmering pools of cool green, and he pushes himself up on his elbows to face his companion. His voice is deliberately, carefully soft, almost tender as he speaks. "Aa… bent your pride a bit, Ayan, didn't you? It must have hurt… someone like you… for someone like me… and now what, hm?"
Aya stares at him wide-eyed. Wanting to plead, toask him not tosay it,yet he merely presses his lips together in a hard line to lock in the words. Yohji holds his gaze... a hint of something in those green depths, a shifting shadow, disappointment perhaps... Aya forbids himself the thought.
"I'll tell you what," Yohji carries on, tone still smooth, "Just straighten it out again and get on with it… it's all the same, isn't it? Wasn't worth the bother, now, was I…"
Aya freezes. Yohji's words whispering through his sore mind like the blade of the katana, stealing away his breath and the last shred of warmth… blowing out the embers of what had been a wildfire of passion, affection, and more…
Leaving behind ashes. Grey and cold.
His releases his grip on Yohji's hair andgets up in a daze. Steps back when Yohji rises to his feet, too,those expressive eyes searching for some sign of life in Aya's blank face…
To find nothing. Aya's features are still, white, void of any expression. The face of a corpse.
It is then thatYohji realises what he has done. It rushes at him with the force of an earthquake. He opens his mouth as if to say something… anything to cut into this awful silence, to soften the blow he has dealt Aya. But now, Yohji, never lost for a smooth return, cannot find the right words. Badly shaken, he reaches out for Aya, to touch him, nudge him awake, make him stutter back to life...
Aya stands still, showing no reaction, his gaze flat, his skin cool.
Yohji flees the room.
Aya sinks to his knees. Doubles over and coils into a tight curl, folding his hands over his head. A small, barely breathing bundle in a dark room.
It is good not to move.
Because as long ashe does not move, he can pretend not to be here.
xxx
Time has lost it's meaning. Yohji measures time in cigarettes. He has neither ear nor nerve for Ken's put-on bluster or Omi's skilfully vacant prattle… he counts many cigarette ends while straining to hear some sort of lifesign from Aya.
While he keeps frantically busy in the shop.
He worksthelateshift all by himself so the chibis can go out to watch a soccer game at the house of one of Omi's classmates from school.
He answers every phone call, dreading the one he hankers for yet doesn't want to get. Schuldig does not ring. The order book fills up nicely for the next few days. After the last customers are served and complimented out of the door with professional charm,helocks up, sorts out the cash register, andeven begins to work on some of the arrangements.
He has a hard time concentrating. So when he runs out of smoke sticks, he sits down behind the counter in the dark, silent shop and buries his face in his damp, flower-scented, earth-stained hands.
It is too still. Yohji likes stillness sometimes, the warm, comfortable kind. Not the kind that fills the Koneko now, for it chills him and makes him shiver.
A small sound drifts into the darkness. Almost too low, to short to be picked up, but Yohji's senses are heightened by is overwrought state of mind. He jumps, rakes his hair back with both hands and then lifts them in front of his face to study them in the vague shimmer of light that trickles through the blinds… gazing at them line by line, for a few breathless moments.
A sweet, metallic ring…
Yohji bursts into motion, bounds up the stairs, taking three steps at once, and barges into Aya's room just as Aya is about to draw the blank blade from its laquer sheath.
He drops it when Yohji swoops down and yanks him close, into an embraze that knocks the air from Aya's lungs, and Aya clings to him for dear life, the half-sheathed blade between them, across their thighs, Yohji's knees to either side of Aya's.
"I am sorry. I'm so sorry, Ayan…"
"Yohji..." Aya's hands diginto Yohji's hair again.
"I'm sorry."
"Yohji," Aya chokes out even as he begins toblindly, wildly kissYohji, "please… sleep with me. Now. Please, Yohji, make love to me…"
They tumble back onto the tatami floor, Yohji half-draped over Aya's short, trim form, his arms wrapped firmly about the younger man. "Why're we doing this to one another?" Passionately, desperately returning Aya's kisses. "I love you, Ayan. No matter what. I love you."
Andsuddenly, Aya lets off and goes limp in his embrace; his breathing deepens, all energy leaves him as if this struggle had drawn his last reserves, and he collapses. Yohji watches his eyes close, dark lashes settling against pale cheeks as Aya turns on his side, his face buried against Yohji's chest to feel his heartbeat. "I'm so tired, Yohji."
Yohji leans down to kiss Aya's hair. Holds him close, moulds his long frame against the shorter one of his companion. "Then sleep awhile," he murmurs. "I'm here. I won't run... I'll make love to you in the morning."
Aya makes no reply. He folds his arms against his belly, draws up his knees, and simply drifts off. Leaving Yohji, spooned tightly around his huddled form, to stare vacantly into the night.
To see but darkness.
And the darkness is white.
xxx
It is dark when Schuldig decides to leave the relative safety of his home and return to the current Schwarz safehouse. He tries to close the outer door quietly, for once not feeling his usual flamboyant, cocky self.
Crawford sits at the kitchen table, the kitchen door open, affording him a clear view of the hallway. The house is still, bar the clicking of the keyboard as he carries on typing as if he had not heard…
Schuldig swallows a groan, meanders closer and leans against he doorframe. "Hey."
Crawford's face is blank, his eyes hidden behind the gleaming glasses. Nothing in his firm, straight posture betrays what heis thinking. Schuldig expects the silent routine; Crawford surprises him by saying, "Good evening."
"Yeah. Any coffee here?"
"Glassjug on the hotplate."
Normalcy. It begins to unsettle Schuldig. He is waiting for the bombshell, but there is no detonation. It makes him suspicious. "Won't you rant at me or something?"
Crawford shakes his head without interrupting his work. "No. It's settled."
"Care to explain?" How could it be settled without his participation? Schuldig is mystified, then cross, then livid, and at last, a slow, cold fear creeps up on him and snags his jittery mind. "Brad?"
"Yes." Crawford's bespectacled gaze flits across the screen as he checks what he has typed so far even while he is talking at Schuldig. "Have your coffee, wash, get some sleep, I need you fit for work. You will not see Balinese again, unless you want him dead and yourself sent back HOME." Crawford sounds light, almost relieved, and Schuldig takes in his words, trying to match tone to meaning.
"Bull," he whispers.
"I heard that."
"You were meant to." And then, the meaning sinks into his mind like lead, and the fight is taken out of him for once, clean and completely . He does not bother with coffee, but slinks off quietly to do as told.
xxx
He is naked, wrapped into a large towel, and sitting on Crawford's bed when Crawford surprises him by stepping silently into the room.
They lock eyes, Crawford glancing down from behind his glasses, Schuldig glinting up at him from beneath messy copper bangs. "I hate you," Schuldig says, his face calm, his tone free of mockery or the madness that sometimes bursts from him. The statement of a fact.
Yet they both know that the fact is also a lie. Self betrayal, an attempt at denial, to twist the life they lead into something more palpable than reality…
The mattress dips as Crawford sits down next to him, and Schuldig stiffens not to sink against the taller man. Resisting the closeness Crawford offers with this gesture.
Straightbacked, Crawford links his hands between his knees and looks at his entwined fingers. "You need me."
Schuldig's face twists in a sneer. "Is that it? Is that really all?"
A long, heavy silence settles between them. Until Crawford breaks it, at last, and Schuldig can see, taste, sense how hard it comes to him to say what he does: one word, cool and low, but clear nonetheless, an admission that leaves no doubt. "No."
And that is the end of the matter.
At least for a while.
xxx
The End